EX/INTROVERT
Oslo, April 2022
ELIZA DOUGLAS’ art practice has many dimensions - from solitary work in the studio on composing music and painting, to collaborating on performance pieces with her partner Anne Imhof and modelling in Demna’s momentous shows at Balenciaga. “I seem to need this range: space where I am alone, and then the extreme opposite, being in front of an audience,” says the artist. In a conversation with Catherine Wood, senior curator of international performance art at Tate Modern, Douglas discusses the leading motifs in her body of work, the unmatched energy of performance art, and music’s magical altering abilities.
You are a painter and you are a performer; one practice is mostly about being alone in a studio, the other about being in front of an audience. What does it feel like for you to move between these practices?
In the last few years, my studio time has been spent mostly making music. Writing the music forNatures Mortes on my own meant that I had to produce much more than I ever have before, and I had to teach myself aspects of composing that I had formerly relied on others for. When I first started making paintings, I was in my studio at school working on them all day long. My current painting practice involves less studio time. This is mostly because the paintings I want to make right now necessitate painting assistants. And clearly, I want to work with a variety of art forms, which wouldn't be possible if I was painting all day. I seem to need this range: space where I am alone, and then the extreme opposite, being in front of an audience. The way energy is concentrated in a live performance is so unique, and it propels me into a mental and physical state that I otherwise wouldn't have access to.
Is there an introversion/extroversion paradox in this, or is the breadth of your practice an attempt to reconcile the two?
It is interesting to think about the relationship between introversion and performing. I have a friend who only likes to go to parties if he is the DJ. He can't really handle actual interaction with people but doesn’t mind being on a stage of sorts and being watched. He has an interesting combination of introversion and extroversion that I relate to. I think I am on the more introverted side of the spectrum, but the kind of performing I do in Anne's work doesn't scare me at all. I would be much more nervous to meet someone I don't know well for coee than to perform in front of a thousand people. So yes, performing does provide an outlet for me that ironically counterbalances a certain shyness I have. It just wouldn't work for me to do only one or the other.
I’m interested in how your recent paintings of crumpled T-shirts with images from Metal bands transform the canvas into something like a skin: the idea of the painted surface and its illusion as T-shirt material sitting on top of the body masks the canvas and makes it kind of bodily... It seems relevant to how you also transform yourself in performance, in collaboration with Anne, for example, but also in your fashion work. You treat your own body as a surface to alter.
My first paintings also related to this: paintings of my hands in which I would "ll in the rest of my body with messy, flesh coloured paint, so the canvas as a body has been a theme for me since the beginning. This wasn't something I consciously set out to do, but it emerged as a motif over time. With the shirts, I have always been interested in how people can use their dress or presentation as a mode of expression, of conscious or unconscious communication. The T-shirt is this entity that most often contains communication, often communicating what we like or don't like, reflecting a moment in time, or evidence of culture.
There is a history to feminist and queer artists playing with this push and pull between ‘make up’ as self-transformation, a form of painting on the face and body, and what happens on a canvas in a studio. Do you connect these things? Does painting allow you a space to ‘make up’, imagine?
It’s interesting; that description immediately makes me think of the older artists in my life who have been inspirational on both a personal and artistic level. And I hadn't formerly noticed a connection between myself and them in this way, because on the most basic level, I do not use make-up and when I perform, I am very much just performing as myself. So maybe this is the way that has indirectly permeated my practice. I relate to my current paintings less as a space to make things up and more as a place where I can transform or illuminate pre-existing segments of visual reality.
You are very well known as a "gure from your modelling and performing, along-side being known as an artist making exhibitions. What do you think about Andy Warhol’s advice: always have a product that’s not you?
For me, the things I do that are separate from me - painting or recorded music for instance - are an important counterbalance to modeling and performing, which feel so tangled up in my appearance and being a surface for people to project on. Maybe this further exemplifies your previous question because a canvas is also a surface of projection, and I am only enhancing that by dressing them up as people.
Your T-shirt sculptures and paintings reference music/bands, and you are also a composer. What does music mean or do for you? In contrast or relation to image-making?
There are aspects of music that I appreciate in contrast to (most) image-making. To be honest, I am rarely moved when looking at a painting. And when I think of music, I find it almost magical in its ability to cull up emotion or alter an atmosphere. I also appreciate the more democratic nature of music in contrast to most art.
What made you want to go to art school?
I wanted to be an artist but was quite blocked for a bunch of years, and I was starting down a career path as a social worker. Going to art school, specifically going to one far from home, felt like the only way to make a last-ditch attempt at doing what I wanted to do. It represented putting myself in a position in which I would get a bit of distance from my past and would have no choice but to make work.
What do you gain from collaborating with other artists? Especially with Anne? What space does it open up?
I have had what felt like unsuccessful collaborations in the past, so my work with Anne is a special case. I very naturally fit into her aesthetic world from the beginning, and there were a lot of innate overlaps in our sensibilities. I think I have a unique understanding about what she likes and what could enhance the work, and since we got together, I have been increasingly shaping that work with her by adding my own interests and ideas. If I hadn't met Anne, I am not sure I would be performing. I sometimes struggle with low self-esteem, and Anne has always believed in me as a performer. She saw something in me that I couldn't see in myself, and she created a space for me that I wouldn't have been bold enough to take on my own.
Could you elaborate on what might be dicult about this specific collaboration?
Where my part or contribution ends and another begins is often unclear, even on an interpersonal level, and then on the public level of course even more so. It can also be tough because art viewers usually want there to be a singular artist genius, and are not always embracing notions of collaboration, so there have been times in the past where I felt a lot of my contributions weren't recognized. And sometimes I have been treated as an objectified extension of someone else, who - to add to the complexity - also happens to be my partner. In the end, it is of course Anne's work, but sometimes I have felt overlooked as being an important part of that, which was why it was so signi"cant to have you see that when we worked on SEX together.
You push yourself to extreme limits as a performer: spilling hot wax on your tongue or licking the concrete floor, performing extreme durational actions - in a sense these draw on the history of body art, but you situate them in a contemporary “pop” context (fashion, music, styling). What does it mean to take things to those limits, is it towards a feeling of freedom?
Yes. I think performing has the potential to insist that I am in the present moment, and that is what freedom is for me: not being caught in the past or future. Interestingly, all the actions you describe were not premeditated. With the wax, for instance, I thought I might pour a little bit on my arm or something, but when opening night came around, I poured it into my mouth. And then I just kept going, each night pouring more and more until it was overflowing all over me. With the licking, Anne had established that as a motif in the past, when she instructed performers to lick their own hands. And I wanted to push it to its extreme. When I went over the scene ahead of time with Anne, I licked this long fluorescent light that was in the space, but that was the extent of the licking. It was only during that show that I licked the floor, and also the bottom of people's shoes. With the audience comes an infusion of energy and audacity, which is part of what makes performing so fun and such a transcendental feeling. It also somehow felt like the only way to be punk at that moment in time. I was thinking of the body art / early performance art connection. That era feels so passé at this point; something that was important and radical at another point in history, but if done now would feel cliché. So, I challenged myself to in some way pull that genre into the current moment and make it feel relevant and alive, to see what a new version or extension of that might be.
Interview by Catherine Wood
Eliza is wearing all clothes Balenciaga
Introduction by Martin Onufrowicz
Photography by Nadine Fraczkowski